The Movie Should Be Called “Evil Queen,” Not “Snow White”
A Lesson From My Two-Year-Old
My daughter (two years old) is obsessed with Snow White right now. I played it for her on a lark, part of a DVD collection her grandmother bought her. The first time we watched it, I explained that the Queen was bad and wanted to hurt Snow White because she was jealous of Snow White’s beauty. I chastised myself a little bit for only reinforcing this gender-stereotyped-a-woman-is-only-as-valuable-as-she-is-pretty line of reasoning, but well, that’s the plot of the movie, I couldn’t lie to the kid.
The funny part is that in requesting many subsequent viewings, my daughter doesn’t ask to watch Snow White, she asks to watch the, “bad queen.” When she re-tells the story in her broken 2-year-old english, she tells it accurately portraying the queen as the protagonist. Snow White doesn’t really do much of anything, it’s the queen who wants her dead, the queen who hires an assassin and the queen who takes matters into her own hands when the assassin fails. The movie should be called, “the evil queen.”
Disney has been on a kick lately of remaking classic animated movies to try and give all of the characters more depth and motivation, decades after the release of Snow White, they have revisited it with live action sequel/remakes. They recognized the need for strong female protagonists. What I found fascinating is that it took Disney decades to figure that out when my daughter analyzed it upon a single viewing.
This only tells me that kids get it. They get every subtle and overt message a film sends them. They get that pretty girls are only pretty in ball gowns (I type as she prances in a tutu) they get that they should want to fall in love with a prince, and they get who is really in control at any point in the story.
Later today, when it’s TV time again, I’ll be making sure she watches Simon Biles, because I want her to see that women are more than princesses with no real power. They are strong humans with the power to do anything.
You know, unless she asks to watch “the bad queen” again.
